My new book “The Economics of Music” is now avaiable in the bookstores. “The Economics of the Music” is a concise, scientifically grounded textbook on the economic fundamentals of the music industry in particular and the music economy in general. It aims to highlight the economic principles that govern the music business by analysing music as an economic good that is protected by copyright law. The book therefore includes a chapter on the microeconomics of music as well as a chapter on the economics of music copyright that is mainly based on findings of institutional economics. The main parts of the book focus on the different sectors of the music industry – music publishing, sound recording, the live music market, and secondary markets such as media and advertising – in order to explain the network of actors in those sectors and how these markets are organised and linked. The music labour markets are treated in a separate chapter. It highlights different income streams for musicians, occupational careers in the music business, and music-related occupations in the wider music economy (education, advocacy, lobbying, etc.). Since digitization has a tremendous impact on the music business, a final chapter on the “Digital Music Business” highlights the new rules, structures, and processes that were established by the digital revolution in order to foreground the structural break the music economy underwent. The last chapter, therefore, refers back to the opening chapter on “A Short Economic History of the Music Business,” which provides an overview from music patronage to the current digital music economy.

2016 seems to be the pivotal year in the recorded music industry. Although no annual statistics have been published until yet, we can take it for granted that the positive trend of 2015 continued in 2016. In 2015, the global recorded music market expanded by 3.4%. The US-market slightly grew by 0.9% and the German recorded music sales even increased by 4.4%.

The booming music streaming market was of course the main driver for the economic recovery of the recorded music business in 2015 and we can expect a further growth in 2016 and the upcoming year. The revenue growth of the streaming business compensated for the decline in CD sales, despite decreasing music download sales as highlighted in “The fate of the CD – an international CD-market analysis”. However, an in-depth analysis of the statistics unveils very different market dynamics in various countries. Whereas music streaming is the main business of the recorded music industry in Scandinavia, CD sales are still relevant in Germany and in Japan (see “The Music Streaming Market Revisited, 2011-2015”).

Jim Rogers’ PhD-thesis at Dublin City University was recently published under the title “The Death & Life of the Music Industry in the Digital Age” at Bloomsbury/London. He interviewed 30 music business professionals in the UK and Ireland from 2007 to 2010 to answer the main research question if the Internet caused a crisis in the music industry that is signalling its final collapse or if it, in contrast, resulted in an intensive restructuring and reordering within the industry.

He concludes that the music industry has not undergone a fundamental structural upheaval but was reshaped by an evolutionary change. Rogers observes more continuities than discontinuities in the music industry and states that most of the music industry actors do more or less the same things but in a different way. In the following I highlight how the author comes to such a conclusion.

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